Jonah 4:2

And he prayed unto the Lord, and said.

The secret of Jonah

In this verse we have the key to the whole Book of Jonah; the secret, the motive both of his character and of his mission. God had sent the prophet to Nineveh, to threaten the inhabitants of that wicked city with the doom due to their sins. “God does not always pay on Saturdays,” says an old proverb, but sooner or later He pays every man, and every race, the wages they have earned. When the Ninevites were convinced that pay-day had really come at last, that they were about to receive the wages of their iniquity, they repented and turned every one from his evil way. And when they repented of the evil they had done, “God repented of the evil He had said He would do unto them.” That is to say, when they were no longer sinners, they were to be no longer treated as sinners. But when, and because, God was no longer angry, Jonah became very angry. That God should “turn away from the evil” He had threatened against Nineveh was itself an evil, and a great evil, to him,--so unlike may men of God be to the God whom they serve. Jonah was angry, and in his anger he “prayed unto the Lord”; and in his prayer he let out the secret of his anger, and, indeed, of the whole story. Now, an angry man may certainly do worse than pray. But if his prayer show that he is angry with God, and angry because God’s mercy is wider than his own, can he do much worse than pray such a prayer as that? Jonah was angry not only because God’s mercy was shown to be wider than his own, but because he had always known that it would be. Jonah’s reluctance sprang from his fear of God’s mercy, his knowledge of God’s humanity. What he was really afraid of was, that God would be too kind to keep His word. If the Ninevites were forgiven, instead of destroyed, why, then, he, Jonah, would be made to look like a fool--a prophet who could not read the omens, nor forecast the future, nor interpret the Voice that spake within his heart. There is no need, however, to insist that Jonah had no other motive than this. Human nature is so complex that men rarely act from a single motive. His main sin certainly was a want of pity for his fellows, an egotism so profound as to move him, a sinful man, to reproach God for His grace to man. He was angry with God for the very reason which should most of all have induced him to love Him,--because he knew God to be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. Have we mastered the great lesson of this book? Do we believe that God loves all men, without distinction of race and creed, and willeth not that any should perish, but that all should turn to Him? There are yet many among us who, if they never doubt God’s mercy for themselves, utterly disbelieve that God’s mercy, in any efficient sense, embraces the whole world. They have never thought nobly of God, but have rather conceived of Him as altogether such an one as themselves. No hope, however “large,” should be unwelcome to a merciful man, who believes in a God more infinitely merciful than himself. Even though he be not able to entertain it, it should not make him angry. We should miss the moral of this story were we to conclude that we are merciful simply because we trust in a larger mercy than some of our neighbours. There is a taint of Jonah’s selfish jealousy in us all, of his indifference to the fate of others, so that our comforts, our salvation, our security are assured. The better we are, and the better we know ourselves, the more eager shall we be to modify Jonah’s prayer, and to cry,--“O Lord, I beseech Thee, make me to know that Thou art a gracious God, and full of compassion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and repentest Thee of the evil.” (Samuel Cox, D. D.)